


Nothing But Vultures

by bette (ferns)



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Eiling is a fuckstick, Fuck you harry, Gen, Human Experimentation, Hurt/Comfort, Jesse finally gets her powers, and if that happy ending is harry getting arrested and eiling getting thrown in prison, and so is Harry, because seriously it's TIME FOR THIS TO HAPPEN, well who am i to say
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-07-11 04:11:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7028017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/bette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harrison Wells would do anything to protect his little Jesse Quick. Even if it meant handing his new “allies” over and sending them off to hell on earth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Now I'm Just Numb

_ “You belong to us now, freak.” _

Barry slammed his head into the door of the Pipeline cell over and over and over again. It may not have been the first time that he had been trapped inside of one, but that didn’t make it any better. It was still too small and too cramped and too-too  _ everything.  _ He hated it he hated it he hated it and he wanted to get  _ out of there. _

_ “What’s going on? Dad-” _

Jesse couldn’t breathe. She stared at her father disbelievingly, eyes stretched as wide as dinner plates, the dormant lightning underneath her skin sparking faintly and whispering for her to  _ run, run, run.  _ “Dad?” She whispered weakly, her voice breaking like she was a middle schooler again. “Dad, you  _ promised.  _ You said that nobody would get hurt-”

_ “And if I do this, you won’t hurt my Jesse?” _

Harry met Jesse’s glare with even certainty, blue eyes meeting those of a slightly grayer shade. “Jesse, you don’t understand. This way, you’ll be safe, and we get to have all of this STAR Labs as ours while the scientific community benefits from the knowledge gained from the metahumans. I know you may not realize why I did this yet, but one day you’ll realize that I made the right choice.”

_ “Who are you guys-hey! Don’t touch that! Wh- _ mph!”

Cisco blinked open his eyes, a pounding headache ringing through his temples. Groaning, he tried to sit up. It felt like he had a hangover times ten. The floor swayed underneath his feet, and Cisco clasped his forehead with one hand as he realized why the small cramped room around him was so familiar.

_ “Calm down, Dr. Snow.” _

Caitlin paced back and forth inside of the Pipeline cell, hands clenched into fists and eyes narrowed into icy slits. She had been the only one to come willingly down into the Pipeline, the only one who hadn’t been knocked out or dragged down like a sack of flour to be tossed in against their will. That didn’t make it any better; it still hadn’t been her choice.

_ “Ms. West, I know that you are not a metahuman. Please calm down and come willingly, and this will be much easier for you.” _

Iris trembled with rage, eyes wide with disbelief and fury. “You can’t do this. I know my rights, and so do all of them. This is illegal. All of this is illegal.”

_ “Let go of me!” _

Barry twisted and fought, clawing at the hands that griped his arms hard enough to bruise. His body started vibrating as he tried to phase through their grips or at least make the friction on their hands uncomfortable enough to make them drop him, but to no avail.

One of the people dragging him along smirked and twisted his arm, making Barry wince in pain. “Friction-proof gloves, freak. You aren’t going to get out of here any time soon.”

Barry glared up at them, eyes sparking with lightning as he was dragged into a room that he was all-too-familiar with; the STAR Labs medbay. But it looked like it had been modified by their captors. All of the soft hospital beds had been replaced by cold metal tables with restraints, and most of Caitlin’s drawers were open, the files inside missing.

“I’m not going to do anything that you want,” Barry spat, ignoring the fear that wormed its way through his gut. “Nothing.”

The other person dragging him along shook their heads, clicking their tongue disapprovingly. “You don’t have a choice in the matter. And we don’t want you to do anything, not yet anyways.”

Barry opened his mouth to ask what they meant when he was lifted up and slammed down onto one of the tables, knocking all of the wind out of his gut as he gasped weakly for air. His arms were yanked down and he felt the restraints being looped around them before the same thing happened to his legs. Barry tried to sit up, only to have his head shoved roughly back down onto the table, making him let out an involuntary yelp of pain.

Leather was placed around his neck, so tight that it dug into the skin if his throat and made it hard for him to breathe. Barry strained against it, making a small sound of protest that was quickly muffled by a wad of cloth being shoved into his mouth.

Barry squirmed uncomfortably as his shirt was cut away from his chest, the chilly air that he just  _ knew  _ had been lowered from its normal temperature raising goosebumps on his skin. Barry struggled as he saw a gleam of metal in the corner of his eye. He tried to ask what they were going to do, but the fabric in his mouth kept it from coming out clearly.

A horribly familiar voice said, “Let’s begin by testing the speed of the creature's healing when caused by different sources.”

* * *

 

Jesse scowled and paced back and forth in the room that her father had put her in, the same one that she had been sleeping in since arriving on this other Earth. She played with the sleeves of her STAR Labs sweatshirt, gray-blue eyes narrowed furiously. How dare he do this?! Didn’t he realize what he had done? Or was his stupid ego still getting in the way of seeing what really mattered?!

There was a guard outside of her door, keeping her inside and escorting her to and from places like the bathroom. They would also bring her small meals at regular intervals.

Since there were no windows in the room, all that Jesse had to know how long she had been in there was the digital clock on the tiny nightstand that was beside her mostly threadbare bed. Three days so far. Three days without knowing what was going on, what was being done to her new… Friends. Without seeing her dad even once.

Jesse took a deep breath to calm herself. She had to get out of there. She had to get out of there. She had to get out of there.

The door to her room opened and Jesse spun around to glare at the person standing there, only to stop and stare when she saw that it was her father.

“Dad? Why are you here?” She took a slow, small step forward, looking him up and down and crossing her arms. “Shouldn’t you be out there helping your new friends _ further scientific advancement?” _

Harry sighed and reached out as if he were going to rest his hand on her shoulder. Jesse deliberately stepped away from him, shuddering like his very presence physically sickened her. Harry frowned and let his hand drop back down to his side. “Jesse, I know you don’t see that I made the right choice right now, but that’s just because you’re too young to see how this will benefit the rest of the world.”

“I haven’t been able to leave this room for three whole days!” Jesse shouted. “Not unless I have to go to the bathroom, and when I do there’s an  _ armed guard _ following me! I saw you letting them take Barry and Cisco and the others down to the Pipeline, I know that you don’t care about them”-the words left a bitter taste in her mouth-“but don’t you care about me?!”

“I do! All of this is  _ because  _ I care about you, Jesse!” Harry said, eyes wide like he didn’t understand why she was looking at him with so much disgust. “They would have taken you too, taken you because you were hit by the particle accelerator the second time that it was activated. Even if you didn’t develop any powers from it, that’s still enough reason for them to take you too!”

Jesse curled her lip at her father before an idea occurred to her. “Let me see them,” she said, instead of an insult. “Let me see the others. I want to know that they’re really alive.”

“Are you sure you want to?” Harry asked his daughter. “It might be a little… Overwhelming for you. I understand that you don’t like seeing others in pain.”

_ In pain?!  _ Jesse thought, although out loud she said, “It’s okay. I just want to see what’s happening to them, so that I know how they’re furthering the knowledge of the entire world.”

Harry smiled, and Jesse tried to suppress her shiver at the coldness in his eyes. “Come on, then. The guard outside your door will let us go together privately, as long as I keep an eye on you at all times. Don’t worry.”

Jesse faked a smile and nodded, following her father out into the hallway and looking around for the guard. When her eyes found him, Jesse gave him a dirty look before turning around and walking after her father down toward the Cortex.

As soon as they arrived, Jesse couldn’t stop her jaw from dropping. The whole place was crawling with soldiers and orderlies, looking through files both on and off of the computer. Some of them seemed to be watching videos of Barry running, and Jesse was suddenly infinitely glad that there were no videos outside of the security cam footage of Cisco using his abilities.

But the worst thing was what was at the very center of the Cortex.

The large crescent-shaped table that was usually there had been pushed against the wall, and where it had been was what looked like an upside-down glass box with a mostly-invisible door and no holes. Cisco was on his knees inside of it, hands clapped over his ears and a gun lying on the ground in front of him. As Jesse watched, he raised his head up and gave one of the people who was watching him an angry glare.

“I’m not going to touch it,” Cisco growled, or at least that’s the way that his lips moved. “You can’t make me.”

The man in the lead, who was tall and had a head full of gray hair, shook his head. Jesse tried to glare a hole in the side of his head as he spoke. “You know what will happen, Mr. Ramon. Don’t make this any more difficult than it has to be.” When there was no reply, he smirked. “Ah, yes, the glass is soundproof.”

He reached out and turned a small dial attached to the side of the container that Jesse hadn’t noticed before. As he turned it, Cisco let out a silent groan and doubled over, still trying to cover his ears. Jesse gasped as she noticed that a small amount of blood was starting to trickle out of them.

“What are they doing to him?!” She gasped, looking at her father for answers. “Can’t they see that they’re hurting him?!”

Harry shook his head. “I told you, it’s all for the good of the world. They may be in pain now, but it will only push us closer to finding cures for diseases, to weaponizing soldiers, and to doing all sorts of other things to the benefit of the rest society.”

Jesse shook her head, unable to tear her gaze away from Cisco. “How can you-he’s in pain!”

Harry clamped a hand down on her shoulder and steered Jesse away, forcing the girl out into the hallway and back toward her room-back toward her  _ prison.  _ “I knew that you wouldn’t understand, Jesse. That’s why I didn’t want to tell you, show you, what was happening. That’s why I wanted to keep you in your room.”

Jesse shook his hand off and stepped backwards, bumping against the wall. “You’re-Cisco and Barry, they saved my life! How can you let this happen to them?!”

A piercing scream interrupted her, and Jesse knew with awful certainty who it had come from. She turned around and started running, not even noticing that she went just a little bit faster than a normal person.

Jesse skidded to a halt in front of the room where the screaming was coming from (which turned out to be the STAR Labs medbay), staring at the bloody scene before her in shock and horror. Bile rose up in her throat, and it took every ounce of willpower that Jesse had not to vomit right then and there.

Tied down onto a metal table, cloth shoved into his mouth to muffle the screaming that was escaping despite it, was Barry. His spine was arched up off of the table in pain and his eyes were squeezed tightly shut, tears spilling down his cheeks out of them. A doctor was standing over him, slicing a scalpel down through his flesh. There were already a pair of bloody marks in his skin, all three meeting in the middle of his torso. As Jesse stared, a fourth cut was added, this one going down to just above Barry’s groin.

A hand grabbed the back of her shirt and dragged her backwards away from the doorway, Barry's sobbing chasing her out.

“Jesse,” Harry said sternly, “I know that you may think that-”

Jesse shoved him away, eyes flashing. “You  _ monster,”  _ she gasped. “You-you-”

When words failed her, Jesse kicked her father hard in the shin and turned around, sprinting for the exit. The world slowed down around her, and Jesse's skin joined the lightning.


	2. Swallow Me Whole

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaah sorry that this took so long for me to write but. here it is. an update.
> 
> there's nothing too bad in this chapter but there is the threat of suffocation, starvation, the threat of murder, and a few other things along those lines.

When Joe’s door was almost blown off of its hinges, he thought that it was Barry. At least at first. That was before he noticed that the lightning was a different shade, didn’t come from someone nearly as tall as his son, and it wasn’t Barry who was standing there, staring at their hands and legs in complete and utter shock.

Joe jumped to his feet and ran to his front hallway, resting his hand on Jesse’s shoulder. The girl flinched away, gray eyes wide, faint tendrils of lightning following her like an afterimage. Her mouth blurred, and noise that sounded almost like static started coming out of it.

“Jesse, _breathe_ ,” Joe said, guiding her over to sit down on his couch. “Deep breaths.” Jesse tried to obey, gulping in air like her life depended on it. Joe stopped her. “Slower.”

Jesse nodded, although it just looked like a blur at her speed, and her body slowly started to stop vibrating, even though she was still shaking at normal human speeds. Joe knelt down in front of the genius with a small wince (he wasn’t as young as he used to be) and gently set a hand on Jesse’s knee as he waited for her to stop humming and sparking like a miniature storm in his living room.

“Can you tell me what happened?” Joe asked when she looked like she was calm enough to actually talk. “How you’re… Like this? And where you’ve been?”

Jesse shook her head. “I don’t know,” she whispered, hugging herself. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I was just trying to get out of there. I was just trying to get help. And then all of a sudden the world slowed down and I thought it was just adrenaline. But-but-but-” She took a few more shaky breaths, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. “I just had to get out of there. And I didn’t know where else to go but to you.”

Joe nodded and rubbed her leg and comfortingly as he could before getting up and sitting down on the couch beside her. “Were you at STAR Labs?”

She nodded tearfully. “Dad, he-he…”

Joe scowled. “What did he do?” The realization hit him like a bolt of lightning. “He called the military. Eiling.”

“Th-that’s his name?” Jesse asked as she leaned subconsciously back against Joe and curled close to him without even realizing.

Joe’s scowl became even deeper. He had tried to get to STAR Labs, of course he had. He’d tried to get there as soon as Barry stopped answering his texts, as soon as Iris didn’t answer when he called her for the twelfth time. Something had been wrong, something had happened to his kids, and Joe would be damned if he let them get hurt.

He’d been forced to turn back when he saw that the street around it was patrolled by armored cars, and something had told him that if he went closer, they would have taken him inside the lab and never let him leave. Used as leverage, maybe. So he’d left, but only to get organized. Only to get as much help as he could before trying to take back STAR Labs.

But Joe hadn’t known that Harry had been the one to betray them.

Joe’s hands clenched into fists. He had _trusted_ Harry, they had _all_ trusted Harry, even after he had betrayed them by stealing Barry’s speed. In hindsight, Joe could remember every terrible thing that he had ever done, the barbed jabs at Caitlin and _especially_ Cisco, the calculating looks that he would give Barry when the younger man’s back was turned and he thought that nobody was watching him.

And even after that, they had still blindly trusted him.

Well, maybe Cisco hadn’t. And Joe had always had a bit of an _off_ feeling about him. But that didn’t mean that the others felt the same way.

Jesse gripped Joe’s sleeve and jerked him back into reality. The girl’s eyes were wide and glossy with unshed tears, although there were already a few making their way down her cheeks and dripping off of her chin. “Mr. West-Joe-the things that they were doing…” She stopped to take a few deep, if shaky and uncertain, breaths. “Cisco was in this-this weird _box,_ and they were doing something awful to him, hurting him, his ears were bleeding. And-and-oh, god, Barry…”

Joe stiffened. “What were they doing to Barry?”

Cisco being in pain was bad enough, but Barry… That made two of his kids being hurt. And Iris and Caitlin were at STAR Labs too. Who knew what was being done to them? They may not have been metahumans, but surely someone like Eiling would find _some_ use for them, right?

(Joe refused to consider the alternative-that there had been no use for them and they had been executed carelessly.)

“They were cutting him open,” Jesse whispered. “V-v-vivisecting him. And my dad was okay with it! He didn’t even try to stop them, just said that I was too young to understand that it was all to ‘further knowledge’.” She shuddered. “I had to get out of there, so I started running, and then… I was here.”

Joe wrapped an arm around her and rubbed her shoulder. “It’s okay. You’re safe now, and we’re gonna get Barry and Cisco and Iris and Caitlin out of there too. Don’t worry.”

“How?” Jesse asked, taking a deep breath.

“Well, it’ll be hard,” Joe sighed. “Eiling, if he really is behind this, is a decorated member of the US Army. It’s going to be hard to get anything to stick. But if we have evidence…”

“The STAR Labs security footage,” Jesse realized. “If we could get to it before they destroy it-”

“Singh can help us actually get into STAR Labs,” Joe said thoughtfully, rubbing his chin. “And I know that Ahuda, at least, will be on board. She might be able to convince Cooper and then have her help with some of the others. She’s a smart kid. Besides, even if they don’t all agree with it, if we get Singh’s approval…”

Jesse nodded uncertainly. “What am I supposed to do?” At Joe’s look, she scowled. “I want to help. I need to show my dad that I’m my own person and that I don’t agree with any of the things that he’s doing and letting those other people do, and I need to show the others that I’m not on his side. That I won’t let them get hurt any more than they already have.”

Joe sighed again. “And there’s no way for me to convince you otherwise? For you to stay back here where it’s safe?”

Jesse shook her head, eyes flashing with determination-literally, since her eyes began to spark with thin tendrils of silvery golden lightning. “No.”

* * *

Caitlin struggled and twisted in the grips of the people who were ‘escorting’ her, face scrunched up into a scowl. “Let go of me! I can walk on my own!”

There was no reply, and Caitlin let out a small choked sound of indignation as she was shoved into one of the many offices inside of STAR Labs (oddly enough, it was the one that she recognized as Hartley’s old workroom, although it hadn’t been used in a long time). Caitlin opened her mouth again to say that there was no need to do anything like that when she caught sight of Cisco.

He was inside of what looked like a glass box, bleeding from a small cut on his forehead and trembling slightly all over. She let out a small cry and tried to run to him, only to be dragged back and forced to sit down hard in a chair.

“Now, Dr. Snow,” Eiling (that _bastard,_ she wanted to punch his teeth down his throat) said, sitting down in front of her across the small table. “None of that. I have a few questions I want you to answer.”

Caitlin stuck out her chin. “I’m not going to tell you anything, you son of a bitch.”

“We’ll see about that,” Eiling said with a smirk. “There are no air holes in your friend’s box. If you don’t answer the questions quickly enough…”

Caitlin shuddered and clenched her fists. “What do you want?”

“Tell me about Mr. Ramon and Mr. Allen’s powers,” Eiling demanded. “What are they? Explain in detail.”

Caitlin stole a glance at Cisco. “If you wanted to know that, why didn’t you just ask _Harry?”_ The sting of his betrayal was still fresh, aching like salt in a wound. She had trusted him, Joe had trusted him, Cisco has trusted him (sort of), Iris had trusted him, Barry had trusted him. They had all trusted him. And he’d sold them out to _Eiling,_ of all people. “Didn’t we have a deal?!”

Eiling clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “I’m asking you, Dr. Snow. And the deal’s off; it’s been off for a long time, I just needed to make plans. I have a lot of things I need answering that only you and your friends can tell me. Now, _what about the powers?_ Remember, every second you waste is another second closer Mr. Ramon is to losing air.”

“Barry has super speed, which you already know,” Caitlin sighed, silently apologizing to Cisco with her eyes. “He can go faster than the speed of sound. Cisco’s… It’s hard to explain. You could call it being clairvoyant, I guess. Only instead of seeing one future, he could potentially see the future of another Earth or another timeline. And it isn’t only the future-he sees the past and the present, too.”

“Very good, Dr. Snow,” Eiling sneered. “Dr. Wells told the same story you did. Which means that Mr. Ramon here gets to live for a little longer.”

He signaled to one of his men and Caitlin watched at the lid was pulled off the box and Cisco was hauled out, taking in ragged breaths of air.

“I’m sorry,” Caitlin apologized, repeating it over and over again as she was dragged off down the hallway with Cisco back toward the Pipeline. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know how else to keep you alive.”

“It’s okay,” Cisco panted. “I understand. It’s okay.”

 _It was far from okay,_ Caitlin thought. _It was far from okay._

* * *

Barry passed out for good on roughly the fifth day, although it might’ve been after that. Caitlin didn’t know. All she knew was that they were lucky he had even managed to hold on for this long without food. None of them had been fed, in fact, but they had been given water-it was a good way for them to control Barry and Cisco, too. Caitlin and Iris weren’t as motivated by it, since they weren’t being tortured themselves (at least not physically), but it was hard not to want some when Caitlin ran her tongue over her dry, chapped lips.

Ignoring the pain in her knuckles, Caitlin pounded on the door of the Pipeline cell, and she could hear Iris doing the same thing as one of Eiling’s goons dragged Barry’s limp body out of the cell carelessly. His skin was too pale and she could already see that he had lost too much weight, far too much for a speedster. His hand looked downright _skeletal-_ she had no idea when he had eaten before STAR had been taken over, it could’ve been a day or more since he’d had an actual big meal since Barry had a bad habit of forgetting to eat large meals and instead relying on smaller snacks throughout the day.

(It had been a relief to find out that Barry didn’t keep kosher-it expanded his dietary horizons and made him much less likely to pass out at random points during the day considering that he could easily grab a burger or something whenever he felt like it, since pastries from Jitters were filling but not exactly very nutritious.)

“Put him down!” Iris spat from the next cell over, voice muffled by the walls. “Where are you taking him?! He needs to _eat!”_

One of the guards opened Caitlin’s cell and she took a small step back, drawing into herself and glaring up at them as she dug her bare toes into the cold floor of the box she was in. The guard grabbed her arm and dragged her over to where Eiling was standing and watching his people manhandle Barry’s unconscious body, completely detached and clinical.

Eiling looked down at her, and Caitlin felt like a bug under a microscope. “What’s wrong with Mr. Allen?”

“He’s-his blood sugar is low, he needs to eat, you haven’t been feeding him. It’s a miracle he held on this long! I-I guess you could say that he’s hypoglycemic, in a way, let me help him, please,” Caitlin pleaded. She hadn’t been allowed to patch Cisco or Barry up after their sick experiments, so she knew that there was a slim chance that she would be allowed to help keep Barry alive, but… Wasn’t that how they wanted him? _Alive?_ “Please, I’ll tell you want you want to know, just let me keep him from dying.”

Eiling paused, and for a single fleeting moment Caitlin allowed herself some hope that was swiftly crushed as Eiling said, “No. There’s no need for Mr. Allen to be awake. When we move onto testing his speed, then we’ll need your services, Dr. Snow-so consider yourself useful for a little while longer.”

“He won’t just stay in a coma,” Caitlin argued, “he’ll _die._ Please, you have to let me do something to help him!”

“You’ll tell us exactly what we need to put in the IV drip. And that’s _all._ Understood, Dr. Snow?” Eiling grabbed her chin and forced her to look up at him. “Consider it lucky that I don’t decide to dispose of Mr. Allen right now. We still have a lot of tests to run on him, and I’d hate to see that all go to waste. Mr. Allen and Mr. Ramon are still valuable, and there’s some use left for you yet. Your reporter friend, on the other hand…” He gave Iris, who still had her hands pressed up against the glass, a meaningful look. “I suggest you behave yourself, Dr. Snow.”

Caitlin shuddered. “I’ll show you want you need to do to keep him alive, I swear, just-don’t hurt Iris, please. And-and let me help Cisco after you _torture_ him, he can’t heal like Barry can, please. He can’t-please. Let me help him. I know more about metahumans than anybody else, including your people. Please let me help them.”

“We’ll see,” Eiling sneered.

He signalled to one of his guards to bring Caitlin out of the Pipeline, and Caitlin tried to keep her chin up as she was forced to walk away, trying to keep her eyes hard as she was made to stand in the elevator with a guard on either side, their heavy hands clamped down tightly on her shoulders. As soon as the elevator opened, Caitlin considered making a run for it, but decided against it as she realized that there really _was_ no reason for them to keep Iris around, and if she tried to run Eiling might just shoot her on the spot.

Harry was waiting for them in the room that Caitlin was taken to, arms crossed impatiently. Caitlin growled as she was shoved past him, hissing curses in Yiddish at him under her breath, eyes hard and cold.

Harry grabbed her upper arm and pulled her to a stop before he slapped her hard across the face. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Dr. Snow, I really am-I considered us friends, co-workers who both wanted the same thing. I guess I was wrong, but I did think you were more professional than to tell me to get run over by a sugar truck.”

Caitlin glared at him, hard, squashing down the feelings of betrayal. “How could you do this?” She demanded. “We trusted you! We risked our lives to save Jesse, why are you doing this?! We thought you were our _friend!_ How could you do this?! Barry and Cisco went with you to save Jesse, how can you torture them?!”

Harry shook his head again. “Dr. Snow, they’re metahumans. They’re not people. They need to be dealt with. This is all for the greater good. Don’t you understand that? Their suffering will benefit the rest of humanity. I know that they were your friends and it’s difficult for you to see them in pain, but you’re a doctor. You must understand the benefits.”

“You kept saying that you weren’t like the Wells we knew, that you weren’t like Eobard,” Caitlin spat, voice trembling with rage. She clenched her hands into fists. “Well, you were right. You’re _worse.”_

Something hit her hard across the face, and for a moment Caitlin’s vision went dark. She blinked spots out of her vision and licked her lips, tasting blood. Her ears were ringing, and out of the corner of her eye she saw one of the guards lowering his gun. He must’ve hit her with it. Caitlin could already feel one of her eyes swelling shut, but it didn’t deter her from giving Harry a look that could’ve frozen boiling water.

Harry looked at Eiling, who tsked. “Come on, Dr. Snow. If you don’t start behaving, I might decide not to let you keep Mr. Allen alive after all. I’m sure we can figure out how to stop him from dying.”

“No!” Caitlin’s eyes (or at least the one that wasn’t swollen shut) went wide. “You’ll kill him, please. Let me help. I know more about metahumans than anybody else, I practically have Barry’s medical files memorized, please. Let me help him. And-Cisco, too, let me help Cisco, let me help him, let me help them both. Please, Barry will die, Cisco might get permanently injured. Let me help them. Let me keep them alive.”

Harry looked at Eiling and frowned a little, considering. “Fine. We need them alive. There are still more tests to run, after all, and I would hate to have to find another set of metahumans with powers like theirs.”

Caitlin growled again as she was pushed toward the metal table holding Barry’s prone body, veins standing out against his pale skin and breathing coming oh-so shallowly. She took a deep breath and bent over him, automatically reaching for the stethoscope that should’ve been around her neck before turning to glare at Harry. “How am I supposed to help him without my tools?”

Someone that Caitlin didn’t recognize, one of Eiling’s doctors, stepped forward nervously, handing over a stethoscope, a piece of paper, and a pen. “Y-you can write the things we can put in the IV down on here,” they said nervously, and Caitlin felt a sick sense of satisfaction at their fear. “But-but we’re going to reference it to make sure you’re not tricking us.”

The last part was said with a little bit more confidence, and Caitlin scowled at them. “Why would I tell you to use the wrong things and kill my friend?”

They shrugged and Caitlin turned back to Barry-in reality, all he needed was a higher amount of what you would usually put in an IV for someone who was malnourished, but she understood why they were being hesitant. Barry could have allergies they didn’t know about, his powers could’ve affected it in some way… Whatever their reasons were, Caitlin was just glad that they were letting her help. Now if only she could convince them to let her help Cisco.

She swallowed, took note of Barry’s too-slow heartbeat, and started writing.


End file.
